The Republicans didn’t get what they wanted from Shutdown, but TFA did
Three weeks and $26 billion later, the Republicans didn’t get what they wanted, but Teach For America did. A little teaser from the upcoming 2013 NEPC TFA brief:
TFA also wields significant political influence. Numerous TFA alumni have left the classroom after their two-year commitment and are positioned in influential roles impacting educational policy— from local and state school boards to Capitol Hill. TFA also spends hundreds of thousands of dollars on lobbying for government appropriations and public policy that is friendly to the organization.
I wrote about how TFA, Michelle Rhee and other were seeking to limit the Teacher Quality for ELL students and how TFA alumni had spoke out against it in the post Battle for California: TFA Civil War, ELLs, and Teacher Quality. TFA lost in California on that issue (See V for Victory: Teach For America, ELLs, and California). But maybe they actually won because TFA has 782 corps members in California, second most in the nation to Texas. However the outcome was different for Teach For America in DC yesterday. Valerie Strauss at the Washington Post wrote:
Unobtrusively slipped into the debt deal that Congress passed late Wednesday night to reopen the federal government after 16 days and allow the United States to keep borrowing money to pay its bills